The_United_Nations ran “Durban II” and on the first day of the conference, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the only head of state to attend, made a speech condemning Israel as “totally racist” and referred to the Holocaust as an “ambiguous and dubious question.” When Ahmadinejad began to speak against the Jews, all European Union delegates left the conference room. The Vatican delegation didn’t say a word. Pope Benedict visited Bethlehem, where the Christian population has dropped from a majority to less than 20%. Benedict delivered a message of solidarity to the 1.4 million Palestinians isolated in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. He said nothing of the suffering of Gaza’s 3,000 Christians since Hamas took over that territory in 2007. Benedict could have decried the bombings, shootings and other Islamist attacks against Gaza Christian establishments, the brutal murder of the only Bible-store owner of Gaza, or the regular intimidation and persecution of Christians there. Instead, the Pope stood beside Mahmoud Abbas as the Palestinian leader deceptively pointed to a concrete separation barrier in Bethlehem and blamed that barrier, as well as Israeli “occupation,” for the plight of Christians.

Carroll a lapsed Catholic priest is a prolific writer on Church-related subjects, such as Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews — A History, and he writes thoughtful and intelligent books. Here’s what Carroll has to say about the UN intention in 1947 to preserve Jerusalem outside either a Palestinian or a Jewish state: Arabs, both Christian and Muslim, wanted control of the sacred centers, but they were not alone in being unable to abide the thought of Jewish control. Yes, the city was the most disputed real estate in Palestine, but mere political turf was not really the issue. The clue to the significance of the Corpus Separandum proposal for the city lay in its being offered in a Latin phrase – the language of Rome, which had initiated Jerusalem’s condition as an apocalyptic nerve center (see the Arch of Titus, near the Colosseum, with its bas-relief celebration of the first century destruction), and of Catholicism, which had kept the condition current. Greeks, too, were part of this, as Byzantium had carried forward assumptions about Jewish expulsion from the land that Constantine and his mother, Helena, had made holy. But by now the Vatican was the chief custodian of exile theology, and it was universally expected to be a party to any internationalizing arrangement. Rome’s unfulfilled desire for Jerusalem was the very genesis of the mimesis – The mimeticrivalry. The Holy See has previously expressed support for the status of corpus separatum. Pope Pius XII was the among the first to make such a proposal in the 1949 encyclical Redemptoris Nostri Cruciatus. This idea was later re-proposed during the papacies of John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II. Corpus separatum is Latin for “separated body”. The term refers to a city or region which is given a special legal and political status different from its environment, but which falls short of being an independent city state.

the NT curses Jews. some xians translate that curse differently then other xians, but in the end I don’t feel very comfortable with a faith that is based on a document that confused people for 2000 years (supposedly)… and frankly I don’t …think they were confused. I take people at their word that they are peaceful, but history is not interpreting that curse well… and Jews are aware of this. I’m not orthodox… I’d like to be, but my life is cushioned in secularism. I live next door to a minister who lends me his lawn mower in the summer despite the fact that he is a Ron Paul fan and thinks the Rothschilds control the banks. I understand that there are people who do not understand their own texts and therefor act on their own human nature. I’ve had a nice conversation with a guy from New Guinea… eating people was just part of his culture. I get it. I also understand that we can not survive if we point out the truth all the time and have to get along. I would like to clarify… I don’t fear Christians. I will tell you why. The Holocaust proved to be the absolute worst thing that ever happened to the church. If another Holocaust happened it would be exponentially bad for Christians. The reason is that if every last Jew were killed off (1) it would not deny the messianic prophesy… because our messiah could be the child of gentiles who were from the line of David. (2) many moral Christians would be angered and would convert to Judaism after every last Jew was killed. Judaism is an inherent Western position. As long as there are Christians there will be Jews… till the end of time. If I were a church leader it would make sense on a pure level of benefit to protect ‘Israel. To not support Judaism from a Christian position is suicide. It is true that we Jews now depend on you for our protection. Our planes will not fly without your technology. We Jews might contribute, but our relationship is symbiotic. So do not fear any hate from me. On the other hand… as much as our relationship is dependent on one another… there is also an inherent character of the Christians to kill Jews that comes directly from your doctrine. it is like a death wish however. it might be seen as a misinterpretation… but it appears to be a misinterpretation that won’t ever go away because replacement theology can be argued axiomatically.